Friday, July 01, 2005

BC Ferries - Insult to Injury

Getting my little Skewbydoo every weekend involves much ferry travel and expense. Two return walk-on trips each weekend. Low season that amounts to $25 each return trip. Add the $9 each trip for parking and the cost of getting my daughter is $68 not including gas or food. We try not to eat ferry food because it expensive food that sucks. We won't even go into the expense involved on those occasions when Pete, Repete and Devilspawn decide to head over for a visit with their dad. Suffice it to say, they are all over the age of 12.

I am not the only parent who does this. Every week the same parents travel back and forth in order to exercise their access to their children.

If we were travelling on a gulf island run, we would have the option of buying books of tickets at a significant discount. Unfortunately, the profitable runs have no such provisions for frequent travellers.

There is more than just the monetary cost. There is the time that is spent. In my case, an average return trip takes about 6 hours from the moment I leave home to the moment I arrive back. This is provided that the ferries are on time and there are no traffic problems.

BC Ferries is complaining about the cost of fuel and are wanting to impose a fuel surcharge and/or slow down the ferries in order to compensate.

I have to wonder - if the cost of fuel decreased in such a way that BC Ferries came in under budget for their fuel bill, would they give customers a fuel rebate and/or speed the ferries up in order to compensate?

I think not.

I am seriously affected by the ever increasing cost of fuel. Not only can I not impose a surcharge to offset these increases, I am also not able to use my fuel costs as a tax deductible expense.

Just one more example of the everyday working stiff getting screwed while big business continues to make big bucks.